The “background” description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description which may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly or impliedly admitted as prior art against the present invention.
All-optical digital information processing can be based on all-optical logic to be used for all-optical computing, for example. Optical computing can use photons produced by lasers for computation.
Stubkjaer and Berrettini et al. report using cross-phase modulation or cross grain modulation in Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers [R. E. Stubkjaer, “Semiconductor optical amplifier-based all-optical logic gates for high-speed optical processing,” IEEE J. Sec. Top. Quantum Electron, vol. 6, 1428-1435, 2000] [S. G. Berrettini, A. Simi, A. Malacarne, A. Bogoni, and L. Poti, “Ultrafast integrable and reconfigurable XNOR, NOR and NOT photonic logic gate,” IEEE Photo. Technol. Lett., vol. 18, pp. 917-919, 2006].
Xu et al. and Ibrahim et al. report all-optical gates utilizing silicon micro-ring resonators [Q. Xu and M. Lipson, “All-optical logic based on silicon micro-ring resonators,” Opt. Express, vol 15, pp. 924-929, 2007] [T. A. Ibrahim, K. Amarnath, L. C. Kuo, R. Grover, V. Van, and P. T. Ho, “Photonic logic NOR gate based on two symmetric micro-ring resonators,” Opt. Lett, vol 29, 2779-2781, 2004].
Wang et al. and Lee et al. report logic gates based on the sum and difference frequency generation in periodically poled lithium niobate waveguides [J. Wang, J. Sun, Q. Sun, D. Wang, X. Zhang, D. Huang, and M. M. Fejer, “PPLN based flexible optical logic AND gate,” IEEE Photo. Technol. Lett., vol. 20, pp. 211-213, 2008] [Y. L. Lee, B. A. Yu, T. J. Eom, W. Shin, C. Jung, Y. C. Noh, J. Lee, D. K. Ko, and K. Oh, “All-optical AND and NAND gates based on cascaded second-order nonlinear processes in a Ti-diffused periodically poled LiNbO3 waveguide,” Opt. Express, vol 14, pp. 2776-2782, 2006]
Chan et al., Nikarmi et al., Hui et al., Hosiny et al., Tsang et al., and Lin et al. report optical injection locking in semiconductor lasers such as Fabry Perot laser diodes [L. Y. Chan, K. K. Qureshi, P. K. A. Wai, B. Moses, L. F. K. Lui, H. Y. Tam and M. S. Demokan, “All-Optical Bit-Error Monitoring System Using Cascaded Inverted Wavelength Converter and Optical NOR Gate,” IEEE Photo. Technol. Lett., vol. 15, pp. 593-595, 2003] [B. Nikarmi, M. R. Uddin and, Y. H. Won, “Realization of all-optical comparator using single mode Fabry Perot laser diodes,” IEEE J. of Lightwave Technol., vol. 29, pp. 3015-3021, 2011] [R. Hui, A. D. Ottavi, A. Mecozzi and P. Spano, “Injection locking in distributed feedback semiconductor lasers,” IEEE J. of Quantum Electron., vol. 27, pp. 1688-1695, 1991] [N. M. Hosiny, R. E. Agmy, M. M. El-Raheem and M. J. Adams, “Distributed feedback (DFB) laser under strong optical injection,” Opt. Express, vol 283, pp. 579-582, 2010] [H. K. Tsang, L. Y. Chan, S. P. Yam, and C. Shu, “Experimental characterization of dual-wavelength injection-locking of a Fabry-Perot laser diode,” Optics Comm., vol. 156, pp. 321-326, 1998] [G. R. Lin, Y. C. Chang, Y. H. Lin, and J. H. Chen, “All-Optical data format conversion in synchronously modulated single-mode Fabry Perot laser diode using external injection-locking induced non-linear threshold reduction effect,” IEEE Photo. Technol. Lett., vol. 17, pp. 1307-1309, 2005]